The Cayman Islands government will have a ‘majority ownership stake’ in all future large-scale renewable-energy projects, Premier Wayne Panton announced Wednesday.
The major policy shift – which Panton said would help accelerate the island’s conversion to green energy – was unveiled at a conference in Miami.
The move appears to dispense with a bid process recently unveiled by energy sector regulator OfReg, that would have involved an auction process to allow private companies, from all over the world, to bid to build solar and wind farms and similar facilities in Cayman.
The new approach means government will part-fund and part-own its own renewable-energy utilities. Details of how this will be financed were not immediately available and Panton said ‘stakeholder engagement’ would now begin to design an implementation plan.
But he characterised the move as one which would significantly speed up Cayman’s efforts to hit a target of 70% of the island’s energy coming from renewable sources by 2037.
“We have to make up for lost time. Faster adoption of renewable energy moves us closer to energy security and energy independence,” Panton said.
The premier, who was the keynote speaker at the Caribbean Renewable Energy Forum in Florida this week, emphasised benefits beyond the environment – highlighting energy security and price stability as important goals.
“The policy decision to be involved at the ownership level is intended to help the Cayman Islands secure its own energy future by accelerating the adoption of renewable energy in accordance with the National Energy Policy – it will help the country become energy independent and more resilient in the face of natural disasters,” he said.
“It will also help stabilise energy costs by reducing the impact of the volatility typical of fossil fuel pricing.”
Panton said it would also mean incrementally less money going off island to pay for fossil fuels.
He added that ownership would be in partnership with others to keep a larger percentage of economic returns ‘within our community’.
The premier also highlighted ‘global price shocks’, including increasing energy costs, as a factor in driving up the cost of living.
In a press release later on Wednesday, government emphasised that the intent is to have a majority ownership stake in future utility-scale renewable-energy generation assets in partnership with other investors and individual citizens. The government does not intend to acquire any existing utility assets or negatively impact consumer-owned renewables, it said in the release.
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Did he just say “speed up” and “government ownership” together?
100% this will SLOW it down significantly.